Written: Written in the first halt of January 1913
Published:
First published in 1913, in the book: N. A. Rubakin, Among Books, Vol. II, Second Ed., Moscow.
Published according to the text in the book.
Source:Lenin
Collected Works,
Progress Publishers,
[1975],
Moscow,
Volume 18,
pages 485-486.
Translated: Stepan Apresyan
Transcription\Markup:R. CymbalaPublic Domain:
Lenin Internet Archive
(2004).
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The origin of Bolshevism is inseparably linked with the
struggle of what is known as Economism (opportunism which rejected the
political struggle of the working class and denied the latter’s leading
role) against revolutionary Social-Democracy in 1897–1902. Economism,
supported by the Bund, was defeated and eliminated by the well-known
campaign of the old
Iskra[4] (Munich, London and Geneva, 1900–03), which restored
the Social-Democratic Party (founded in 1898 but later destroyed by
arrests) on the basis of Marxism and revolutionary Social-Democratic
principles. At the Second Congress of the R.S.D.L.P. (August 1903), the
Iskrists split: the majority stood for the principles and tactics
of the old Iskra, while the minority turned to
opportunism, and was backed by the one-time enemies of Iskra, the
Economists and the Bundists. Hence the terms Bolshevism* and
Menshevism[1]
(Bolsheviks and Mensheviks). In 1903–04 the struggle was mainly over the
Mensheviks’ opportunism in questions of organisation. From the end of 1904
on, tactical differences became the most important. The “plan for the
Zemstvo
campaign”[5] put forward (autumn 1904) by the new Iskra,
which had deserted to the Mensheviks, took up the defence of the tactics of
“not intimidating the liberals”. The year 1905 saw the tactical
differences take final shape (the Bolshevik Congress, Third Congress of the
R.S.D.L.P. in London, May 1905, and the Menshevik “conference” held in
Geneva at the same time). The Mensheviks strove to adapt working-class
tactics to liberalism. The Bolsheviks, however, put forward as the aim of
the working class in the bourgeois-democratic revolution: to carry it
through to the end and
to lead the democratic peasantry despite the treachery of the liberals. The
main practical divergencies between the two trends in the autumn of 1905
were over the fact that the Bolsheviks stood for boycotting the Bulygin
Duma while the Mensheviks favoured participation. In the spring of 1906,
the same thing happened with regard to the Witte Duma. First Duma: the
Mensheviks stood for the slogan of a Duma (Cadet) Ministry; the Bolsheviks,
for the slogan of a Left (Social-Democratic and Trudovik) Executive
Committee that would organise the actual struggle of the masses, etc. This
could be set forth in greater detail only in the press abroad. At the
Stockholm Congress (1906) the Mensheviks won the upper hand, and at the
London Congress (1907), the Bolsheviks. In 1908–09 the Vperyod
group (Machism[6] in philosophy and otzovism, or boycotting the Third
Duma, in politics—Bogdanov, Alexinsky, Lunacharsky and others) broke away
from the Bolsheviks. In 1909-11, in fighting against them (cf. V. Ilyin,
Materialism and Empirio-Criticism, Moscow,
1909[2]
),
as well as against the liquidators (Mensheviks who denied the need for an
illegal Party), Bolshevism came close to the pro-Party Mensheviks
(Plekhanov and others), who had declared a resolute war on
liquidationism. The Bolshevik organs were:
Vperyod and Proletary (Geneva, 1905), Novaya
Zhizn (St. Petersburg, 1905), Volna, Ekho,
etc. (St. Petersburg, 1906), Proletary in Finland (1906–07),
Geneva (1908) and Paris (1909), Sotsial-Demokrat in Paris
(1909–12). Some of the principal writings of Bolshevism are collected in
V. Ilyin’s’[7]Twelve Years, St. Petersburg, 1908, which also
gives a more detailed bibliography. The main Bolshevik writers:
G. Zinoviev, V. Ilyin, Y. Kamenev, P. Orlovsky and others. In recent years
Bolsheviks have been the main contributors to the newspapers
Zvezda (1910–12), Pravda (1912), St. Petersburg, and to
the periodicals Mysl (1910), Moscow, and Prosveshcheniye
(1911–13), St. Petersburg.

Notes

[3]The article “On Bolshevism” was written by Lenin for the
second volume of N. A. Rubakin’s book Among Books. On January 12
(25), 1913, Lenin sent the article to Rubakin in Clarens, Switzerland, with
a letter stipulating that the article “should not be altered
in any way” (see present edition, Vol. 35, Russian ed.,
p. 45). The article was published in full.

[4]Iskra (The Spark)—the first all-Russia illegal
Marxist newspaper. It was founded by Lenin in December 1900 abroad, from
where it was secretly sent to Russia. It played a tremendous part in
uniting the Russian Social-Democrats ideologically and paving the way for
the unification of scattered local organisations in a revolutionary Marxist
party. After the split into Bolsheviks and Mensheviks that took place at
the Second Congress of the R.S.D.L.P. in 1903, Iskra passed into
the hands of the Mensheviks (beginning with No. 52) and came to be called
the “new” Iskra as distinct from the “old” Iskra,
edited by Lenin.

[5]TheZemstvo campaign was conducted by bourgeois liberals
between the autumn of 1904 and January 1905. It consisted of a series of
congresses, public meetings and banquets at which speeches were made and
resolutions passe din support of moderate constitutional demands. Lenin
sharply criticised the Menshevik attitude of sup port for the campaign in
his article “The Zemstvo Campaign and Iskra’s Plan”

[6]Machism—a reactionary, subjectivist-idealist philosophical
trend which became widespread in Western Europe in the late nineteenth and
early twentieth century. It was founded by Ernst Mach, an Austrian
physicist and philosopher, and Richard Avenarius, a German philosopher.

Machism was particularly dangerous to the working class as a trend of
bourgeois idealist philosophy, for while professing to be opposed to
idealism it referred to contemporary natural science, a circumstance which
gave it a “scientific” semblance. In Russia, Machist influence was strong
among a section of the Social-Democratic intelligentsia. It was
particularly widespread among the Menshevik intellectuals, such as
N. Valentinov and P. S. Yushkevich. Some Bolshevik writers, too, including
V. Bazarov, A. Bogdanov and A. V. Lunacharsky, adopted the standpoint of
Machism. Under the pretence of developing Marxism, the Russian Machists
tried to revise the fundamental tenets of Marxist philosophy. Lenin in his
book Materialism and Empirio-criticism exposed the reactionary
nature of Machism. He upheld Marxist philosophy against revisionist attacks
and elaborated dialectical and historical materialism in the new historical
conditions.

The defeat of Machism struck a powerful blow at the ideological
positions of the Mensheviks, otzovists and god-builders.